It’s fun to surprise people. It’s even more fun to surprise demons.

“Leave  us,” Doxle said, without turning to face my jailer. 

My jailer didn’t seem to be able to process those two words. I didn’t bother trying to keep the smile off my face. It’s not often I get to surprise someone by proxy.

“Begging your pardon, sir, but I don’t think I should do that,” my jailer said. “I don’t know what you have in mind, but you can’t trust that one. She’ll gut you quick if you get any closer. In fact you should probably move back a bit even now.”

Doxle rolled his eyes before visibly suppressing a sigh. 

“Your concern is appreciated,” he said, rising to his feet and turning to face my jailer. 

From the tension in his shoulders and the set of his elbows and fingers, he was holding back an impulse towards violence without a great deal of effort. The scent of lightning stirred in the air around him though, suggesting that if he decided that minor bit of restraint was no longer worth it, any indulgence in mayhem would be swift and dramatic.

“Well, you can’t be too careful. Not after she put six of our best in the infirmary,” my jailer said.

“Six in the infirmary and none in the morgue? Curious,” Doxle said. “Where do you think she might put you, if she was freed of those chains?”

He snapped his fingers and the manacles around my throat and hands dropped to the grey stone floor with a satisfyingly heavy thunk.

I started to chuckle.

I’m not sure it sounded properly human.

That was fine. After two days in a cell, cut off from almost everything I was, I wasn’t feeling properly human either.

Sinking down onto my haunches, I gathered strength for a killing pounce as I met my jailer’s horrified gaze.

I waited just a moment longer, savoring the widening of her eyes. Clear white terror invaded them, rippled up from the pit of his belly.

Ending this too quickly would have been a mistake. He needed to see what was coming, and from the trembling step he began to take backwards I was pretty sure he could.

I started to move but Doxle held a hand out. It wasn’t enough to stop me. He barely had two fingers interposed between me and my jailer. There wasn’t even a spike of ash or lightning to go with it. It was a signal that I should stop, and only that.

So I listened to it and paused, waiting motionless to see what would happen next.

I’d assumed Doxle was going to make a comment but the jailer’s scream cut that short. For a big guy, my jailer was not lacking in speed when it came to retreating. I heard him race down the hallway and slam shut the door on the far end. It sadly took several moments longer for the stench of his cologne to follow after him, returning the prison to its normal aroma of pathetic human misery.

“My apologies,” Doxle said, turning back to me. “That was not how an Imperial servant ought to present themself.”

“You left the chains on my legs,” I said.

“I did,” Doxle said, showing neither guilt nor an intention to change the situation.

“What do you want?” I asked. I was curious, but I suspected if I didn’t keep things simple we would be here for hours and with my neck no longer bound, gnawing a path to freedom was more viable than ever.

“You, I want you,” Doxle said. “Tell me, do you know what an Imperial Advisor is?”

“No.” Again, I could have lied but to what point? If he thought I was an uneducated idiot why would I care?

“I imagine you haven’t received formal training in the fundamentals of magecraft or Divine Matrices?” Doxle asked.

I didn’t bother replying to that, letting my silent stare be answer enough.

“If I may ask, under whose tutelage did you study the Transcendent Arts?” Doxle asked. “A family member? A retired neighbor perhaps?”

More silence was his only answer.

“You need not fear any repercussions for yourself or them,” Doxle said and turned away to pontificate for a bit. “When Imperial Council disbanded the public academies the natural result was to leave those outside the Great Houses without access to proper education in all manner of subjects, the Transcendent Arts most especially.”

I continued to stare at him. Usually people eventually decide to start making sense when I do that.

He turned back and started to speak again but stopped before another word escaped his lips. I saw his eyes narrow as he searched my face for something.

“You’re not afraid,” he said.

There wasn’t a need to answer that.

“You’ve never been trained? At all?” The idea seemed alien to him, as though he’d been asking where I’d learned to breathe and discovered I’d never managed to work out the mechanism of it.

In truth, learning to breath had been tricky, but I had managed that years ago and was, I felt, justifiably proud at how effortless it had become.

“Yet you sent an entire squad of the local guard to the chirurgeon’s care,” Doxle wasn’t speaking to me anymore. He was pacing and ruminating, with only the occasional glance in my direction as though seeking proof I hadn’t vanished like a trick of the light.

I followed his pacing with my eyes, but stayed coiled tight. He wasn’t going to hurt me. If he’d intended to, he would have done it already, or would build up to it in some dramatic fashion. The door, however, was still open.

I debated whether I could leap hard enough to rip my feet out of the manacles, or off if necessary, but choose to stay where I was.

If nothing else, I was still waiting for an answer to my question.

“I suppose that means she may, in fact, truly require my assistance,” Doxle said, no longer even pretending he was speaking to me. “What an astounding situation. So unlikely too. It’s been, what, a century? Two maybe? And no whispers of any grand machinations of the Court? Delicious.”

He turned back to me and noticed the bored expression I’d allowed to settle on my face.

“Lady Kati, please correct me, but is it fair to say that you have come to the workings of magic only recently?” he asked.

I nodded slowly, unsure where he was going but not yet out of patience.

“And to date, no one has shown you the theorems and instructed you in the geometries of spell casting?”

I nodded again. Some of that was slightly familiar. I’d never been instructed in magic, for a variety of reasons, but it was impossible not to pick up some idea of what it involved by listening to people talk about it.

“A grave disservice has been done to you,” Doxle said. “You asked what I want, and I must beg your indulgence. There is a groundwork of understanding I must lay before you before you will have a full comprehension of the arrangement which is formed between an Imperial Advisor and their ward.”

My patience frayed at that, but only a little. He’d let me scare away the jailer, and he’d removed three of my five manacles. That bought him my attention for a while longer.

Also, if he left it wasn’t like I had much else I could do in the cell.

“These however are not ideal circumstances in which to instruct a neophyte,” Doxle said and snapped his fingers again.

The manacles on my ankles fell away, leaving me completely free.

Or free of their constraint at least.

To get through the door, I would need to get by Doxle. I was quick, but I didn’t like my chances.

“Why?” I asked, meaning why had he freed me, though he chose to answer a different version of it.

“Had you been formally trained already, the bindings upon you would have presented no measure of duress. You would have been familiar with the pact I mean to offer you or free to pursue your own path to freedom,” Doxle said. “As it stands, I believe the only opportunity you might have had for freedom would have involved some rather dreadful sacrifices. Sacrifices which could have compelled you to form a pact even should accepting it be anathema to you.”

“So I can leave?” I asked. I’d understood his words, but clarity on that point seemed critical.

“Of course,” Doxle said. “You shouldn’t have been detained here in the first place.”

“And the trial?” I asked, wondering if I was going to be pursued by the city’s guards for the rest of my life.

“I am your trial,” Doxle said. “If I set you free, anyone who would contest that will need to challenge me on the subject.”

I smiled. Challenging Doxle would not go well for my jailer, or likely all of the jailers here.

I rose slowly and took a tentative step to leave the cell, but Doxle held up a hand.

Because of course it was too good to be true.

“There is one bit of mistreatment I can remedy,” Doxle said and pulled a green gown with silver piping from thin air. “They are supposed to provide prisoners with proper clothing, not leave them with nothing more than bloody rags.

I was still wearing the dress I’d been hauled into the prison in, though it had lost a sleeve, all the material below my knees, and been shredded across the midsection well before I arrived at the city gates. The blood on it was mostly not my own, but there was entirely too much regardless of the source.

With another wave, Doxle conjured a folding screen which divided the cell in half. I was on the wrong side of it to make a break for the door, but I saw the value in changing first. If there was pursuit after me, finding the girl in a green gown was going to be more challenging than finding one in a gown caked with mud and splattered with blood.

“I imagine you have designs against your jailer,” Doxle said. “I would suggest that you may wish to stay your hand for now.”

“Why?” I asked.

“He may prove useful to you soon,” Doxle said.

“How?”

“He is terrified of you,” Doxle said. “Such people are easily influenced, and can provide a form of testimony which is convincing when others are not.”

‘Easily influenced’ wasn’t a trait I’d considered my jailer to have, but I had to admit, it was easy to see when I considered his overall behavior.

I stepped out from behind the curtain, the new gown getting dirty already from my hair and unbathed body. I held onto the old gown too. I hadn’t meant for it to be destroyed and there had to be someone in the city who could restore it.

“I can go now?” I asked.

Doxle nodded but then held up his hand again.

“Perhaps I should lead,” he said. “If the staff sees you first, they may leap to unfortunate assumptions. Oh, and you may also want these.”

Another flick of his fingers and he handed me a pair of soft leather ankle boots. 

They didn’t match the gown, but their fit was as perfect as its had been and I found them pleasing. They had a heavy sole that would make stomping much more effective. After waiting a moment for me to put them on over my otherwise bare feet, Doxle led me out of the cell and to the door at the end of the hall.

“We’re leaving now,” he said to the trio of cowering jailers on the other side.

“Is she properly bound now sir?” my jailer asked.

“She is with me,” Doxle said.

“Okay,” my jailer said, his voice wavering between terrified and relieved.

The door opened to show the stairway leading up and three grown men plastering themselves to the wall.

Doxle made a small shooing motion since passing between them was impractical given the narrowness of the stairs and they all but fled up the stairs before us.

I didn’t remember being taken through as many room as we wound up chasing the guards through, them proceeding us as if there was anything they could do to prevent my escape at this point, and Doxel casually walking forward as I followed.

When we stepped at last into the sunlight, I turned punched my jailer in the throat.

It was gentle.

I didn’t crush his windpipe.

Not completely.

And I didn’t tear his throat away slowly.

Which was what I’d been planning to do.

He went down choking and sputtering, but, crucially, not dying, which I felt showed a truly admirable level of restraint.

“She…she can’t do that!” one of the other jailers cried.

“Not if she’s properly bound! Not if you say no!” the third jailer objected.

Doxle turned only his head to glance over his shoulder at them.

“You are correct, but why would I say no to her?”